Nothing Crosses the Grain
A portrait that emerges from a field of parallel lines — with every feature made by the lines themselves, so nothing is drawn across them where the modelling gets hard. Five fields.
Two runs of the same template. This run failed the law, and it is here because the failure is instructive. The line spacing collapsed: instead of hairlines a gap apart it produced continuous tone, so the picture is a horizontally smeared photograph rather than a line field. Once the gaps are gone the features have nothing to be made from, and it duly draws them - the eye has a painted pupil with a specular highlight, the lips are modelled photographically. It also boxed its corner type, which the template does not ask for. The lesson for your own fields: the spacing is not a stylistic note, it is the mechanism, and if the gaps close the rule has nothing left to enforce.
Checked at native resolution where it matters. The eye socket is made entirely of vertical lines dimming toward the ground, and the lid edge is a step between one bright run and a dim one - there is no curve drawn across the grain anywhere on the face. The reference run of this style modelled its forehead, cheek and jaw honestly with lines and then drew the eyelid, the eye crease, the nostril and the lip as smooth horizontal strokes on top, in the four places the constraint was hardest.
Generated for this library
Input
Subject an old carpenter's head in profile, facing left,
eyes closed, a soft cap on
Grain vertical hairlines, spaced about their own width
apart, running the full height
Hard the eye: lines shorten and darken to nothing in
the socket, then one bright run marks the lid ·
the nostril: a short gap where three lines stop
early · the lips: one row brightening sharply and
the next dimming, no stroke between
Palette deep navy - cyan, ice blue, a little violet
Type top right THE OLD CARPENTER / MEMORY IN GRAIN ·
bottom left TRADITION · PATIENCE · FORM
Returned 1 poster · 2:3 · lines on deep navy
grain one direction throughout - not one mark anywhere
runs across it
eye solved by shortening and brightness alone, with no
curve drawn over the lid
mouth two adjacent rows at opposite brightness, the lip
line appearing in the step between them
edges lines thinning to nothing at the outside, so the
head dissolves into the ground
type four short lines, all set vertically to match the
grainYou fill in 5 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The subject, in profile or silhouette
- 2The grain — direction and spacing
- 3How the hard features are made — no drawing across the lines
- 4The palette
- 5The type
Nothing Crosses the Grain
Produce ONE image, 2:3 portrait: a subject emerging from a field of parallel lines. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.
First — do you have the fields?
If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.
Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.
The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.
If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.
Fields — replace these five lines only
- The subject, in profile or silhouette: {who or what, and which way it faces}
- The grain — direction and spacing: {a direction, a weight, a spacing}
- How the hard features are made — no drawing across the lines: {the eye, the nose, the mouth, each solved}
- The palette: {a deep ground, and two or three line colours}
- The type: {two or three short lines, and their positions}
The grain law
The picture is made of parallel lines and nothing else. That is the whole idea, and it survives right up until the modelling gets difficult.
Not one mark in the image runs across the grain. No curve, no stroke, no contour, no outline. If the grain is vertical, every mark in the picture is vertical.
A reference run of this style built a superb portrait from vertical lines — forehead, cheek, jaw and cap all honestly modelled by line behaviour — and then drew the eyelid, the eye crease, the nostril and the lip as smooth horizontal curves laid on top. Four marks, in the four places the constraint was hardest, and the picture stopped being a line field and became a drawing with stripes over it.
Look at the eye and the mouth first. They are where this fails.
The four ways a line can carry information
Everything is built from these, and only these:
- Length — a line stops early, or starts late. A row of lines stopping short of each other draws an edge.
- Brightness — a line lightens or darkens along its run. Adjacent lines at different brightness make a step, and a step reads as a boundary.
- Density — lines crowd together or open out. Crowding reads as dark and as detail.
- Break — a line has a gap in it. A row of aligned gaps reads as a hole or a highlight.
A feature is a pattern across neighbouring lines, never a mark laid over them.
The hard features
The fields name how each is solved, and those solutions are followed exactly. In general:
- An eye socket is lines shortening and dimming toward its centre; an eyelid is one bright run against a dim one.
- A nostril is a short aligned gap where a few lines stop early.
- Lips are two adjacent rows at opposite brightness, with the lip line appearing in the step between them — never a stroke.
- A jaw or a cap edge is where lines change brightness together, or where they stop.
If a feature cannot be made this way, leave it out. Its absence is correct; a drawn version is not.
Resolution
Nothing finer than the line spacing can be described. Eyelashes, stubble, fabric weave and small text are below the resolution of the picture, and inventing them requires crossing the grain.
Edges
The subject is not cut out of the line field. At its outside edges the lines thin, dim and space out until they are the ground, over a distance of several line widths. The head dissolves; it does not end.
The field runs to all four edges of the sheet, continuing faintly where the subject is not.
Ground and colour
- One deep flat ground from the fields.
- Lines in two or three related hues, shifting gradually across the field, brightest where the subject is lit.
- No gradients in the ground, no glow, no bloom, no texture.
Type
- Small, in one light sans, letterspaced, at the positions the fields give.
- Set to match the grain's direction — with vertical lines, a line of type may run vertically up an edge.
- Never over the subject.
- Only what the fields supply — no invented archive numbers, series numbers or dates.
Never
- ✕ any mark running across the grain
- ✕ a drawn eyelid, nostril, lip line or outline
- ✕ a subject cut out of the field with a hard edge
- ✕ detail finer than the line spacing
- ✕ the line field stopping before the edges of the sheet
- ✕ glow, bloom, gradients in the ground, or texture
- ✕ type crossing the subject
- ✕ invented numbers, dates or series names
The result
A face that is genuinely only lines: every feature arriving as a change in how the lines behave, the hard parts solved rather than drawn over, and the whole head fading back into the field it came out of.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Replace the five FIELDS lines. Spend your effort on the third — it exists because those features are where this always fails.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the poster.
- Look at the eye and the mouth before shipping. If there is a smooth curve there, the grain has been crossed and the picture is a drawing with stripes on it.
What you swap
- The subject, in profile or silhouette
- an old carpenter's head in profile, facing left, eyes closed, a soft cap on
- The grain — direction and spacing
- vertical lines, hairline weight, spaced about their own width apart, running the full height of the sheet
- How the hard features are made — no drawing across the lines
- the eye: lines shorten and darken to nothing in the socket, then a single bright run marks the lid's edge · the nostril: a short gap where three lines stop early · the lips: one row of lines brightening sharply and the next row dimming, with no stroke between them
- The palette
- deep navy ground — cyan, ice blue and a little violet in the lines
- The type
- top right THE OLD CARPENTER / MEMORY IN GRAIN · bottom left TRADITION · PATIENCE · FORM
Before it runs
- A subject with a strong silhouette and few features. Profiles work; three-quarter faces give you two eyes and a far cheek to solve and the constraint usually loses.
- A plan for the eye and the mouth before you start. These are the places the rule breaks, and naming the solution in the field is what stops it.
- Acceptance that some detail will not survive. Anything finer than the line spacing cannot be described, and inventing it means crossing the grain.
When to reach for it
Culture programmes, album art, archive and portrait series, data-flavoured campaign work. Templates in this style hold the constraint across the easy passages and then draw the eyelid, the nostril and the lip as smooth curves laid over the top — which is where the whole idea comes apart.
What changes
- One subject emerging from a full-frame field of parallel lines, on deep ground.
- Every feature built from line behaviour alone — length, brightness, density, break — with no mark crossing the grain.
- The hard passages named in advance, so the eye and mouth are solved rather than drawn over.
- Lines that thin out into the ground at the edges, so the subject dissolves rather than being cut out.
- Type set small at the margins, aligned to the grain's direction.
Pairs with
- Bolted to the SkyA mascot built as real signage — a face on a plate, one wider name plate under it, and visible hardware holding both to the pole. Six fields.
- Cut, Not FilledA copperplate-engraved city poster in one ink — where every tone is line density, nothing on the page is a flat fill, and the bare paper is a shape rather than a margin. Six fields.
- Every Bar Is a MultipleA barcode poster in two colours — with the code built on a base module, guard bars and a numeral row, so it reads as a scanned object rather than a stripe field. Five fields.